By Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum

WHEN?: Saturday 23 August 2025 (press ticket)

In our attempt to fill the sad Welly gap, before we realised that Hot Wax were possibly the new best thing, we knew The Pill, who opened the Common Stage today, were a cert. We’d seen them support Welly in Southampton earlier this year, and we could see and sense the potential.

• Read on for reasons including Shed Seven, Utah Saints, Public Service Broadcasting & Betty Boo

Fast forward to May and The Pill supported Panic Shack at Papillon, Southampton. That night, you could see the transformation – how slick those Isle of Wight girls were, the sass and the attitude were always there, but add in the dance routines and they were almost the stars of the night! Obviously Panic Shack were, but their audience loved The Pill. 

At Victorious, they’d added in matching outfits. Whilst Hot Wax were serious the day before, The Pill manage to retain that sense of fun. Songs like Woman Driver (‘Excuse me sir, I appear to have hit your car’ – just class) and Money Mullet (a hate song against mullets) appeal to the crowds and they go down extremely well. They’ve been aired on BBC 6Music quite a few times and are definitely heading for great things.

Ms Humdrum got a call to interview the one and only Rick Witter from Shed Seven (pictured below with Mr Humdrum), appearing later on Saturday afternoon. Ms Humdrum is such a fangirl, it took all her concentration to … well … concentrate on anything else until it was over.

Rick was, as I’d expected, a true pro and such a delight to talk to. I think he’d have carried on for the rest of the day if we hadn’t been asked to wrap it up. The full interview will appear soon, but let’s just say it refers to Duran Duran, Showaddywaddy and designing covers to records that didn’t exist yet.

Crystal Tides, a brilliant and extremely popular local band, stepped in at the last minute when Chris McCausland was taken ill. Singer Billy Gregory told us how they’d all got really drunk yesterday as they weren’t performing this year! It didn’t seem to affect them and the crowd were mad for them.

The Sheds were themselves right in the middle of the political fall-out from bands pulling out. Local lad Marley Blandford was shipped over to the Common Stage from the Castle Stage, to fill the gap while the running times were adjusted. Marley Blandford rose to the challenge of keeping the slightly irritated crowd happy and his genius idea of getting us all to sing along to Bohemian Rhapsody at the end was perfect. It was almost like the Massaoke yesterday! Awesome Marley, thanks for what you did. 

The Sheds, well what can we say? We’ve seen them many times. They always deliver and have managed to switch themselves from a legacy band to a current one, with two number one albums in two consecutive years, this year and last.

Rick has the charisma that not many frontmen do; he always addresses the youngsters in the crowd (really it’s just part of his long-term marketing strategy!) and gives out his maracas to them. Having discussed with Rick earlier how a group like Shed Seven decide what to leave out of a short festival gig, they actually had an extra 15 minutes (45 is criminal for them really).

The set is as you’d expect, though a sneak preview of the upcoming interview reveals that the Humdrums’ favourite, Dolphin, was not included. Even when the band had an extra 15 minutes, and I was fully expecting Rick to play it and dedicate it to me, no, they added in Elvis’ Suspicious Minds straight after, obviously, Going for Gold and a good cover of The Smiths’ There is a Light.

What the extra time did really was gave Rick more time to engage with the audience. He regaled us of the time he was nearly sick on Judy Finngan. A perfect hour with so many singalong tracks, and despite not including Dolphin, my favourites were Getting Better, Disco Down, Speakeasy, Going for Gold and, obviously, Chasing Rainbows. Thank you Rick and the rest of the Sheds. We all love you.

My Victorious highlights were done now, Charlatans, Ash and Shed Seven. Where could we go from here?

Calming down from interviewing and watching Shed Seven (did I mention I interviewed Rick Witter?), we rushed over to catch the last half of Public Service Broadcasting. We haven’t seen them for years and when we first saw them, many years ago, they were just two. Now there were seven! We heard the end of Go!, before finishing with Gagarin, complete with a cosmonaut bouncing around on stage, as usual, and Everest. As well as their music telling the stories, their visuals are mesmerising – footage of Yuri Gagarin and Edmund Hillary et al really make the audio-visual experience. 

Off to the Seaside Stage to chill and we catch the end of Captain Flatcap, drum and bass accompanied by a live flute. We wished we’d seen more. 

Betty Boo – now she plays tennis with a friend of mine. I really thought she was going to be the surprise act last year! She burst on stage amazing us all as she hasn’t changed! She guided us through her hits, Where Are You Baby? and Doin’ the Do, obviously, but finishing up with Hearsay’s Pure and Simple, which she co-wrote! Who knew! 

This was picnic blanket on the hill time, overlooking the Solent and the Isle of Wight. But we couldn’t sit down as soon as Utah Saints started. They’ve played at Shiiine On festival, the 90s indie weekender at Butlins, a few times and Festy Girl was not impressed that we woke her up for the closing 2am set to “listen to knob-twiddlers”!

She doesn’t get it, but thankfully the whole of the Seaside Stage field did. It was rammed with people dancing of all ages. You can see that they absolutely love performing, mixing bangers going back to the 80s, sadly tonight though, only dropping in a hint of Something Good. We love it when they play their hits too. An absolutely smashing set, as always. 

We admit we watched only a few minutes of The Streets’ Mike Skinner’s DJ set to go off and find Slick Minded Individuals play at the People’s Lounge. This is a 7-piece, playing their own mix of ska, reggae, a bit of jungle and drum ‘n’ bass – all sorts really. Their own songs are great, along with a mix-up of Forgot About Dre. A really cool band that got us all up dancing. A good way to end the middle day, if the headliners didn’t pull you away. 

Cycling home on Saturday in convoy with a few randoms, burning 375 calories dancing to Utah Saints for an hour, cycling 20 odd minutes to get there in time for the openers and 25,000 steps later, the Humdrums are nearly broken. Madness’ lines of “so begins another weary day” aren’t quite true here, as our bodies are weary but not our minds. 

The whole politicial flag controversy, complete with bands pulling out and statements from the festival organisers apologising and making donations… it certainly gives you something to think about. Maybe Victorious is an important enough platform now for artists to want to make their feelings known. While the sun shines on this unique seaside festival, the controversy over whether music should be political remains. Let’s see what today brings. I can’t blame artists for wanting to share their beliefs; I can’t blame artists for wanting to share their songs. After all, Public Service Broadcasting’s first album compels us to “Inform-Educate-Entertain”.

• Pictures via Facebook courtesy Victorious. Tickets
• Read more from Carron at her blog A Humdrum Mum
• Have you seen any of these shows? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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